Social enterprise push or corporate social responsibility pull? The mainstreaming of fair trade

Social enterprise organizations and activities combine market-oriented approaches with social aspirations, whereas corporate social responsibility strategies seek to integrate social aspects into core business strategies. The rise in social enterprise activity at the business end of the spectrum raises questions about how, where, and why social enterprise and corporate social responsibility might overlap. Through a review of literature, we demonstrate how the mainstreaming or corporatization of fair trade activity provides an example of this overlap. The tensions between the push of social aspirations within fair trade and the pull of commercial imperatives are highlighted. From a marketing viewpoint, a social enterprise push strategy is shown as typically undertaken from an organization perspective, whereas pull strategies in marketing are typically customer driven. We demonstrate that influences from both social enterprise and corporate social responsibility are evident in fair trade mainstreaming processes, although the extent to which each “pushes” or “pulls” varies across circumstances and interpretations.     

Adding Value to Agricultural Data: A Golden Opportunity

Agricultural decision makers rely on information provided by public and private entities. Data is a valuable asset and represents a tremendous investment of resources. However, difficulty locating sources and/or interpreting values may compromise its usefulness. The Florida citrus industry serves as an example of the data problem faced by many users; over 50 publications produced by 13 agencies are identified as official sources of citrus data. An indication of the potential for lost value and the dilemma facing modern agriculture is provided. This paper draws on corporate information management techniques as a framework for adding value to agricultural data.     

Self-Ratings and Expectations of the U.S. President, Ideal Physicians, and Ideal Automechanic

Relationships between self-ratings and expectations of an ideal U.S. president, were studied in 43 men drawn from a university setting in the eastern coast of the U.S.A. The men first rated themselves on personality variables, life choices (agentic and communal), peacefulness, spirituality, and morality. Then they were presented with a vignette requesting that they describe an ideal U.S. president on inventories measuring personality variables, life choices, peacefulness, spirituality, and morality. For the rating of the ideal U.S. president, they also were asked to respond to a 20 item questionnaire that was a composite of several factors on organization and leadership, morality, spirituality, and peacefulness. The respondents belonged to one of seven different political persuasions, similar in some ways to different cultures. Self-ratings of the men and expectations of the president were highly correlated for extraversion, openness, trait morality, agentic and communal life choices. However, no significant correlations were found between the self-ratings and expectations of the president for neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, peacefulness, nor state morality. The men were also presented with vignettes for the ideal physician and ideal automechanic and asked to rate each of them on the inventory items. Overall, the U.S. President was rated as more neurotic and immoral in terms of ingrained ideas of right and wrong, but also as more caring for others, transcendent, seeking goodness and truth, forgiving, cooperative, and most concerned with matters of justice and mercy, and more concerned with both agentic (power-seeking) and communal (community-minded) life choices than were either the ideal physician or ideal automechanic. The ideal physician was rated as highest in extra-version, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and overall peacefulness, and lowest in neuroticism. The ideal automechanic was rated as highest in state or situational immorality, and lowest in both agentic (power-seeking, business-mindedness) and communal (community-mindedness) life choices, and also lowest in caring for others well-being, transcendence, seeking goodness and truth, forgiveness and cooperation, being concerned with justice and mercy, overall expectations, overall spirituality, and overall organization and leadership. In general, the self-ratings were significantly related to ratings/expectations, of the U.S. President, ideal physician, and ideal automechanic. The men seemed to identify more with the automechanic than with the present or physician.     

Annuity Values in Defined Contribution Retirement Systems: Australia and Singapore Compared

Annuities promise to play an increasingly important role in countries with national defined contribution retirement systems. In this article we examine life annuities in two countries, Singapore and Australia, each of which has a national mandatory pension program. Exploiting data on annuity pricing and purchase behaviour, we compare the money's worth of life annuity products across these two nations. Our results indicate that, after controlling on administrative loadings, there are important differences in measured adverse selection. Part of the explanation may be due to the different structures of the two countries’retirement systems.     

The effect of management commitment to service quality on employees’ affective and performance outcomes

A service recovery performance model is proposed and tested with data from frontline bank employees in Turkey. The model is derived from Bagozzi's (1992) reformulation of attitude theory. The empirical results suggest that top management commitment to service quality, as manifested by frontline employees' appraisal of training, empowerment, and rewards, has a significant effect on their perceptions of service recovery performance. The influence of management commitment to service quality on service recovery performance is mediated by frontline employees' affective commitment to their organization and job satisfaction. Implications of the results and further research avenues are discussed. Emin Babakus (ebabakus@ memphis.edu) (Ph.D., University of Alabama, 1985) is a professor of marketing at the University of Memphis. In addition to theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, his research has been published in such journals as theJournal of Marketing Research, theInternational Journal of Research in Marketing, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Business Research, and theJournal of Advertising Research. He serves on the editorial review boards of several journals. Ugur Yavas (raxyavas@mail.etsu.edu) (Ph.D., Georgia State University, 1976) is a professor of marketing at East Tennessee State University. Besides theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, he has contributed to such journals as theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Business Research, theInternational Journal of Research in Marketing, theEuropean Journal of Marketing, International Marketing Review, theJournal of International Marketing, Management International Review, theJournal of the Market Research Society, theInternational Journal of Service Industry Management, andLong Range Planning. He currently serves as the editor of theJournal of Asia-Pacific Business. Osman M. Karatepe (osman.karatepe@emu.edu.tr) (Ph.D., Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey, 2002) is an assistant professor of marketing at Eastern Mediterranean University (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus). He has contributed to such journals as theJournal of Hospitality and Leisure Marketing, The Service Industries Journal, Tourism Analysis, theInternational Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Administration, andAnatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research. He currently serves as the associate editor of theEMU Journal of Tourism Research. Turgay Avci (turgay.avci@emu.edu.tr) (Ph.D., Cukurova University, Adana, Turkey, 1995) is an assistant professor of management at Eastern Mediterranean University (Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus). He has contributed to such journals asThe Service Industries Journal, theJournal of Hospitality and Leisure Marketing, Tourism Analysis, theInternational Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Administration, andAnatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research. He currently serves as the editor-in-chief of theEMU Journal of Tourism Research.     

关于新疆生态移民问题的研究

本文对新疆生态移民的特点、生态移民遇到的问题及生态移民工作进展的现状,进行了分析和探讨,在此基础上提出了解决问题的一些对策和建议。     

The effect of management incentives and cross-listing status on the accounting treatment of R&D spending

This paper investigates the effect of management incentives and cross-listing status on the accounting treatment of research and development (R&D) spending for a sample of Canadian hi-tech and biopharmaceutical firms. U.S. GAAP adopts an immediate expensing rule for all R&D spending except for software development costs for which technological feasibility has been established. Contrary to the U.S., Canadian and international standard setters recommend capitalization if development costs meet certain criteria. Because those criteria are largely based on management judgment, capitalization of R&D spending is an accounting choice that can be used for income manipulation or signaling.Using a logit model, we examine how the decision to capitalize R&D spending is influenced by the cross-listing status and several other key firm characteristics that are well documented in the accounting literature. We find that the probability of capitalizing R&D spending increases for cross-listed and non-cross-listed firms in the software industry. The probability of capitalizing R&D spending also increases for firms that are more leveraged, more mature, and have higher level of cash flows from operations. However, the probability of capitalizing R&D spending decreases for larger corporations, firms with more concentrated ownership and highly profitable firms. Overall our results indicate a preference for Canadian firms in the software industry to emulate U.S. accounting practices for R&D spending. They also suggest that firms use the decision to capitalize or expense R&D spending as an earning management tool to either meet debt covenants or to smooth income.     

Understanding consumption in social virtual worlds: A sensemaking perspective on the consumption of virtual goods

Virtual consumption involves consuming virtual goods in cyberspace. Virtual consumption activities are evolving into an essential activity in social virtual worlds. Despite the growing importance of this activity, little research examines this phenomenon. The current study investigates the fundamental question of how users understand the consumption of virtual goods. Using the theory of social representations and core-periphery analysis, this study elicits and analyzes the social representation of virtual consumption. Study participants are 154 Second Life users. Results identify 32 concepts and relationships representing the collective perceptions of virtual consumption in this social virtual world. Social representation map interpretations point to several key themes that provide a foundation for future investigations of virtual economy consumption behavior.     

Putting the Cart before the Horse? Re-Examining the Relationship between Domestic Savings and Economic Growth in Selected Sub-Saharan African Countries

In addition to the standard Granger causality, this paper employs the Toda–Yamamoto approach and instantaneous causality test to examine the causal relationship between domestic savings and economic growth in 10 sub-Saharan African countries utilizing time series data. Findings from both the standard Granger causality and Toda–Yamamoto approach are consistent and robust only in five countries where domestic savings and economic growth are completely independent in three countries. For the remaining two, causality runs from savings to growth. However, for the other five countries, findings produced from both causality tests are grossly inconsistent and mixed leaving us under a quandary although the Toda–Yamamoto test is often reliable on account of its ability to avoid misleading results associated with the asymptotic nature of the standard Granger causality test. Our findings further reveal an instantaneous unidirectional causality from domestic savings to economic growth for only Benin, Mali, and South Africa suggesting that savings-led growth is rapid for these countries. We conclude based on our findings that the myriad of ‘evidence’ in earlier studies on savings-growth causality should be treated with caution given that methodological differences can produce misleading results with the potential of misdirecting policy.